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Aziraphale stood in front of the only mirror in Crowley’s house turning his face side to side, unable to conceal the smile that spread over his cheeks as he watched his reflection.
Allowing himself a quiet giggle after a quick visual sweep of the room to make sure he was still alone, he gently removed the dark, tiny sunglasses (the ones Crowley wore to the Globe back in 1601, if he remembered correctly) and set them down light as a feather on the dresser. Aziraphale walked his fingers slowly over the frames of 20-odd other pairs of sunglasses, all neatly lined in a display case. His hand hovered over a couple of pairs before settling on the silliest pair he could find.
The glasses he picked up looked like two long triangles, blacker than the pits of Hell (he imagined), with a tiny chip along one edge. Aziraphale ran his thumb along the edge of the frames, feeling the nick in the plastic under his soft skin. He lost himself for a moment, imagining up scenarios for how exactly Crowley could’ve broken these strange glasses in precisely the smallest way possible.
He put the strange sunglasses on and looked into the mirror. The angel tried to contain himself for barely a moment before he melted into a shaking puddle of giggles. Grabbing the edge of the dressing table to steady himself, Aziraphale sank to a trembling crouch. He knew he wouldn't disturb anyone if he let himself laugh aloud, but it felt mean to really laugh– they did belong to Crowley, after all, but for the immortal life of him, Aziraphale couldn't work out how the demon could've seriously used these glasses. Or why he would ever try.
"Angel!" Crowley's voice came suddenly and loudly, full of something like anger that shook the walls around Aziraphale. The angel shot up to stand as straight as he could manage after the fright, and yanked the glasses from his face, to look at his demon… friend… directly. The shock of the sudden company caused him to fumble, and he ended up juggling the sunglasses between his hands for a few seconds that felt longer than all the time he'd known Crowley.
"Oh, goodness," he said, more to himself than the demon, as he finally got a grip on the glasses. Putting them back in their case on the dresser, Aziraphale noticed that he'd caught them by the lenses, and his assigned body had left some smudgy fingerprints on the glass. A quick wiggle of his fingers behind his back as he turned to face Crowley miracled away the marks.
"What are you doing?" Crowley had removed his own sunglasses, and his reptilian eyes flickered with the same not-quite-anger that tinged his voice still.
"I- I was just…." the angel fiddled with the hem of his waistcoat, "I didn't mean to laugh they're just… they're very odd sunglasses."
"Angel." The wrath of Hell had left his voice a little, "What are you doing?" Aziraphale didn't understand the question– he thought it was abundantly clear what he was doing. Crowley's eyes were still fixed upon him, a snake waiting for the right moment to strike at a mouse for its breakfast.
Crowley took a few slow steps towards the angel in his usual slightly drunk and unsteady fashion, but Aziraphale knew his movements were purposeful, concrete, and took his own unsteady step back into the edge of the dresser without even realising it. He glanced behind him to find his bearings, and when he looked back Crowley was barely inches from his face.
The demon quickly looked over Aziraphale's shoulder at the sunglasses he'd neatly displayed in front of the mirror. Aziraphale noticed the barest sigh of relief, he thought, escape from Crowley's lips. Crowley's lips that were very close to his own, he noted, though he had the slightly upsetting realisation that this didn't seem like the situation that a surprise kiss might fix.
The angel steeled himself against whatever storm was brewing behind Crowley’s eyes.
“Which ones did you try on? Which ones did you move?”
“Uhhh…” Aziraphale was becoming more confused by the second. Instinctively, he raised his hands to gently hold Crowley’s shoulders— something he’d discovered, over the years, that had a calming effect on the demon. Crowley didn’t react in the way Aziraphale expected, he didn’t react at all.
“Which. Ones. Angel?” The bite that punctuated each word struck Aziraphale in a part of his heart that the stupid human host body couldn’t quite manifest.
Aziraphale slowly turned himself away from Crowley to face the display of sunglasses on the dresser. He was embarrassed to find that his hand was trembling as he reached it out to gently touch the glasses he’d tried on— he found that the words caught in his throat when he tried to answer Crowley that way.
Crowley’s breath was hot on the back of Aziraphale’s neck as he watched the angel point out the sunglasses he’d picked up.
The small black pair from Shakespearean times. The stupid pointy black ones. Light pink frameless stars that Aziraphale thought he recognised from a flashy concert he’d seen back in the 70s.
Aziraphale felt Crowley’s whole body tense against his own for the briefest moment. Interesting. The angel had an idea, and ran his fingers slowly up and down the rows of glasses again, waiting.
There it was again. The snake, waiting and tense, but this time not hunting. Hunted.
“Hm, I think there was also…” Aziraphale let the tiniest sliver of devilishness lace his voice as he gently walked his fingers over the frames again, paying close and careful attention to the silent demon behind him.
And there it was. “Yes. This pair.” He was focused so intently on Crowley behind him— his breath just audibly hitched in his throat, the warmth of his increasingly heavy breath moved now from Aziraphale’s neck to the back of his ear, his knuckles white as he gripped the edge of the dresser from around the angel’s waist— and he didn’t even register what pair of glasses had elicited this response.
More importantly, he needed to know why.
"Shit," the demon's head dropped so his forehead now rested on Aziraphale's shoulder, "well I guess you already know then… I should've hid that better."
Aziraphale immediately assumed the worst; these glasses must be linked to Crowley's most terrible deed, the worst temptation or miracle– if it could be called that– that he'd ever performed. He knew he had to play along, keep his cool.
"Yes, dear… Crowley, I know. And it's okay."
“‘It’s okay’? What is that supposed to mean?” Crowley straightened himself up behind Aziraphale and spun the angel around by the shoulders to face him. The demon’s eyes were burning bright with an emotion the angel still couldn’t place.
“I uh...I” Aziraphale stuttered over his words, knowing his bluff was called, he had no idea where to go next with it. Angels don’t tell lies, of course, so he didn’t exactly have practice with recovering from them. The thought spun around in his head. Angels don’t lie. Angels don’t lie. But he had lied. Just now. To the one person he had loved most on this Earthly plane. And on the Heavenly plane before, for that matter.
“I realise now that behind my favourite shadessss,” Aziraphale’s eyes widened as Crowley spoke, the serpentine speech spilling out a dead giveaway that the demon’s emotions were running high, “was a stupid place to hide it.”
Hide it, hide it, hide it. The angel’s mind ran a million miles an hour trying to work out what it could be so he could start to cover his treacherous, lying tracks.
“Yes,” Aziraphale mentally stomped his foot when he realised he was still fumbling through his words, “You have had better ideas, my dear. But like I said, nothing to worry about, it’s okay.”
“Stop saying that and just tell me your answer then, for Heaven’s....Hell’s...ugh! Sake!” Sensations were always muted through this human body, but Aziraphale felt Crowley’s grip tighten around his shoulders, the tips of the demon’s fingers digging into his borrowed flesh enough to turn the knuckles white.
“My...my answer?” Heavens be, I’ve really hecked this one up haven’t I. Aziraphale felt a blush dust over his cheeks and nose as though God herself had frosted him with rose-tinted icing sugar.
“Yes! Oh Heaven above and Hell below, what is your answer, angel?” Crowley closed the already tiny gap between his face and Aziraphale’s until their noses were squished together in a way that would certainly be considered cute by the mortal world’s romantics if Crowley’s voice wasn’t also rising in volume and pitch with each breath. “WILL YOU MARRY ME OR NOT, ANGEL?”
Silence.
Centuries-long silence fell between them. It filled the room, it grew to the size of Crowley’s house, and burst out the windows, through the gaps between bricks in the walls. It enveloped the whole world, and engulfed the infinite expanses of Heaven and Hell, bringing them together in a way they had never been before, even before the Fall.
The angel’s blush burst into flames around his mortal form, and were he able to think of anything, he would worry that he was about to become discorporated. In the first instance of loss of control since he was designated this soft and round and strange body, Aziraphale’s wings burst out from his back, the eyes lining the length of his wings glowing brighter than any being, celestial or otherwise, could ever comprehend.
A soft and distant sound drifted its way slowly in through Aziraphale’s ears. He couldn’t make it out, couldn’t focus on it at all. It kept repeating, slowly becoming louder and louder as he cooled, both physically and mentally.
“Angel? Angel? Aziraphale? Angel!” Aziraphale came to, gently brought back into the room with the warm and comforting feeling of Crowley’s arms wrapped both tightly and gently around him. The demon’s voice somehow shouting whispers into his ear, desperate.
“Crowley,” the angel’s voice was coarse and incorporeal in a way he’d never heard before, “Crowley...you hellish demon. You’re proposing to me?!” He folded his wings back into secrecy.
Crowley reluctantly released Aziraphale from his arms, stepping back to look the angel in his eyes.
“You said you’d tried the glasses on. Angel, did you lie to me?” He stepped to the side of Aziraphale, closer to the display case on the dresser. The angel turned slowly and purposefully to watch him. The demon’s long, narrow fingers paused just before they touched the glasses, and curled back toward his palm. Crowley looked back to Aziraphale with eyes the angel knew were trying to show anger, but gave away his fondness entirely too easily. “Oh, I really am having an effect on you after all. Me, clearly the most powerful demon alive, made the kindest angel tell a lie.” He didn’t even try to hide the smug grin that stretched over his face.
“Crowley…” Aziraphale spoke timidly as the blush returned to his cheeks. The demon kept smiling at him, but the smile turned soft, sentimental, enamoured. He took the angel’s hand in his own, a touch nothing short of tender.
With his free hand, Crowley lifted the sunglasses from the case, and with a glint as the light hit it, Aziraphale saw a ring was hiding just under one of the side-shields all along.
Crowley didn’t get down on one knee. He’s not exactly one for tradition. Aziraphale reminded himself to fight the disappointment that the sappy romantic in him threatened. And that’s exactly a part of why I love him. Oh I do, God forgive me, I am in love with this demon. Ever since Eden. Over 6000 years. What took us so long?
Words as soft as the feeling Aziraphale remembers from sheltering Crowley under his wing from the first ever rainfall found their way to his ears.
“Aziraphale, angel, will you marry me?” Demon that he was, and cocky as ever, Crowley didn’t wait for an answer. He didn’t need to. Aziraphale lifted his hand, still held fondly in Crowley’s own, toward the ring.